Traffic shaping everything (inc newsgroups)

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by KN4995

Well, I don't have a P2P app on my machine.. But I take very careful notice of my speeds, just 'coz I'm geeky like that.
Mine definately drop lower than they should be in the evening. I'm certain of it.
(he says with his paranoid hat on ).

I will borrow your paranoid hat m8 I am convinced my access to my news server has been throttled, havent been able to get over 1 meg all day and then midnight comes and bang back to full speed. (same everyday for a week) Not that i mind i just wish they would say one way or the other and i wouldnt have wasted 10 hours on the phone to TS.....

Originally Posted by Uncle Peter

Most Xbox live games. There are very few that are hosted on dedicated servers. Most of the traffic is p2p over udp port 3074.

Well that makes no difference to me as im a pc gamer so I certainly aint gonna be wanting to host one

[Doofy]

Just a question how do i find out if my news connection is being held back who do i phone? please god don't tell me it's TS

[KN4995]

Strange.
My NG server (astraweb) is always fine.

[Dawn Falcon]

Originally Posted by pachelbel

Well if you accept that principle then the simple question again is 'what is the point of high speed BB'

Absolutely. Nothing. Whatsoever. Downgrade now.

I'm perfectly happy on 4MBit, and I use ~15GB a month. (And the other 3 people sharing it use another 2GB). If the 10MBit is capped, and thus has crappy gaming performance in those hours, it's yet another reason to pay less.

And without an official way of monitoring bandwidth usage, they could just cap everyone in an area where there was insuifficient capacity. I'd love to say that that's paranoia, but it happened to me about 4 years ago with an ISP. (They told about 20 people in the area they were using x3 what DUMeter etc. recorded...). And until such mechanism is provided, sorry, it dosn't exist. And the bandwith limits DO.

I'd love to see, if an ISP advertises "unlimited" or "unmetered", them being forced to disclose any cap or "Subject to FUP" etc. in the same size font on the advert (web or print). THAT would stop a lot of the more ridiculous offers out there.

Zinglebarb, completely untrue. For example, the shared house I live in comes with said 4MBit NTL broadband and a wireless router. The price is included in my rent, but I have no choice of broadband service, etc.

This is NOT unusual arround here (Oxford).

Also, you're completely overlooking the effects of upload. Limiting the upload, as I'm sure happens (again, if it's not - PROVE IT! - I've seen this before on other ISP's, as I've said), is going to magnify the allready poor effects of traffic shaping on peoples ping...so yes, it's going to ruin the web experience of anyone affected. Downloading might be okay even at the reduced speed, but I'd doubt gaming or in many cases web browsing would be.

[Richy99]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Just a question how do i find out if my news connection is being held back who do i phone? please god don't tell me it's TS

what news server?

I have a general question on traffic shaping.

Is traffic shaping implemented because the whole physical network cannot cope with the peak evening load.

Is it implemented because NTL's Servers cannot cope with the load.

Is it an area issue.

Is it a local street issue down to the cabinets.

We seem to have people who get great BB and others who get rubbish.

If its a whole network issue then the situation will surely only get worse. P2P is the current application causing the problems. No doubt more bigger, better, faster, resource hungry applications will appear.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Richy99

what news server?

eurofeeds but my net is really dire today and i do mean dire

A lot of the internet problems being bought up in this thread most likely not have anything to do with traffic shaping anyway

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

A lot of the internet problems being bought up in this thread most likely not have anything to do with traffic shaping anyway

I agree i did ask the rather helpful chap at swansea and he said it wasn't down to it top fella really polite and helpful

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by pachelbel

I have a general question on traffic shaping.

Is traffic shaping implemented because the whole physical network cannot cope with the peak evening load.

Is it implemented because NTL's Servers cannot cope with the load.

Is it an area issue.

Is it a local street issue down to the cabinets.

We seem to have people who get great BB and others who get rubbish.

If its a whole network issue then the situation will surely only get worse. P2P is the current application causing the problems. No doubt more bigger, better, faster, resource hungry applications will appear.

NTL don't have one whole network, they have many. NTL haven't said anything about how they will use Traffic shaping. For the record, they haven't officially said they are using it at all.

The problem is that NTL (along with all commercial ISPs) has based their business model on the fact that not everyone is downloading 24 hours a day as it would not be profitable for them to operate a service where everyone (or a lot) of people where downloading 24 hours a day for £35 a month, As it is, I am told they take a fairly heavy loss on the top tier of bb access.

With P2P, this is often not a reality. People DO leave their PCs on 24/7 continually down/uploading. Cable is a shared medium. If you get a few people in an area using their 10 meg connections 24/7, it doesn't cause a problem. If you get hundreds (as might happen in a town or city), then everyone gets slow connections.

Can NTL servers cope? Depends on what services people are trying to access, and which area they are in. Most people's web browsing goes through a network of proxies NTL have set up. Some area's proxies cannot cope (Poplar and Bromley being two recent examples of this). Things like Streaming media and Newsgroups don't necessarily go through NTL's servers though. Sadly, the proxies do save NTL money (external bandwidth costs them), so we are unlikely to see the back of them anytime soon.

The French ISPs are (I believe) slightly different. They are (again, I believe) partially state funded, so profit is not so important. Our government is not so enlightened.

Cheers StuartC.

Supplement question. What monthly download is accepted as normal/high usage.

[Stuart]

No one outside NTL knows. If anyone inside NTL knows, they don't appear to be saying.

[Mr Angry]

As mentioned earlier - I have official confirmation from NTL that they are indeed using traffic shaping.

on trial somewhere not everywhere